Mike Piazza just missed being elected to the Hall of Fame. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) announced Tuesday that Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Craig Biggio have been elected into baseball's Hall of Fame.

Mike Piazza was not inducted, coming up 28 votes shy of the 412 needed to get elected.

However, that would have likely been different if the BBWAA didn't have one arbitrary rule that unnecessarily limits the number of votes some players receive.

With a pool of candidates that was the deepest in recent memory and a Hall of Fame class that will be the largest in 60 years, there is good evidence that voters being limited to just 10 votes forced a lot of writers to leave players they deemed worthy off their ballots.

A simple bell curve would suggest that if about 280 voters thought there were 10 worthy candidates, a large chunk of those voters actually believe there are more than 10 worthy candidates and would have voted for more. This suggests that a lot of players who deserved votes didn't get them because of an arbitrary rule set forth by the BBWAA.

At least one writer has already come forward and confirmed this. Hall of Fame voter Steve Popper says he wanted to vote for Tim Raines but did not because of the 10-vote limit. Raines was named on 55.0% of the votes.

Another consequence of the arbitrary 10-vote limit is that many fans feel outraged when some players like Randy Johnson (named on 97.3% of ballots) or Pedro Martinez (91.1%) are not named on every ballot, despite careers that would appear to be Hall-of-Fame locks.

Voters differ on the best way to fill out a Hall-of-Fame ballot. Many believe that the so-called "immortals" should be elected in their first year of eligibility, with unanimous votes. However, other voters leave candidates who they feel are likely to win anyway off their ballots, freeing them up to vote for players who may be borderline candidates. This is, once again, a result of the 10-vote limit that keeps voters from naming every player they feel is worthy.

So the solution is to eliminate the maximum number of votes and just let the voters decide how many players are worthy of induction. If that would have happened this year, Piazza would probably be on his way to Cooperstown.

Popular from BI Prime

Close iconTwo crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.Check mark iconA check mark. It indicates a confirmation of your intended interaction.